Vehicles include a body structure formed from a plurality of individual components that are interconnected to create a frame structure for the vehicle. Many automobiles include audio systems having a subwoofer. Subwoofers include a speaker and other electronics disposed within a housing. The housing is typically formed of low-strength plastic designed to only support the weight of the speaker.
Subwoofers are a relatively large and require designers to specifically engineer the vehicle body structure so that a large packaging space for receiving the subwoofer is provided between the components of the body structure. In many instances, an optimized body structure would have a load-bearing member extending through the subwoofer packaging space. But, in order to package the subwoofer, this load-bearing member is omitted and the body structure is redesigned, in a less efficient way, so that the load paths of the body structure extend around the subwoofer packaging space. This disclosure addresses these and other problems.